Nvidia Q3 results: Tech giant delivers robust performance, beats forecasts; earnings soothe AI bubble concerns

In its press release, the California-based tech giant said that it reported record revenue for the third quarter ended October 26, 2025, of $57.0 billion, up 22% from the previous quarter and up 62% from a year ago.

For the quarter, GAAP and non-GAAP gross margins were 73.4% and 73.6%, respectively.

For the quarter, GAAP and non-GAAP earnings per diluted share were both $1.30.

“Blackwell sales are off the charts, and cloud GPUs are sold out,” said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of Nvidia. “Compute demand keeps accelerating and compounding across training and inference — each growing exponentially. We’ve entered the virtuous cycle of AI. The AI ecosystem is scaling fast—with more new foundation model makers and more AI startups across more industries and in more countries. AI is going everywhere, doing everything, all at once.”

During the first nine months of fiscal 2026, Nvidia returned $37.0 billion to shareholders in the form of shares repurchased and cash dividends. As of the end of the third quarter, the company had $62.2 billion remaining under its share repurchase authorisation.

Dividend details

Nvidia will pay its next quarterly cash dividend of $0.01 per share on December 26, 2025, to all shareholders of record on December 4, 2025.

Nvidia Q3: Here are the key numbers

As per the company's earnings release, revenue for the quarter under review (GAAP) grew 22% QoQ and 62% YoY to $57,006 million. Its gross margin came in at 73.4%, up 1.0 bp pts QoQ but down 1.2 pts on a YoY basis.

Operating expenses stood at $5,839 million, up 8% QoQ and 36% YoY.

Operating income jumped 65% YoY and 27% QoQ to $36,010 million.

Net income for the quarter stood at $31,910 million, up 65% YoY and 21% QoQ.

Diluted earnings per share (EPS) increased by 20% QoQ and 67% YoY to $1.30.

Data Centre Q3 Highlights

• The company said that its third-quarter revenue was a record $51.2 billion, up 25% from the previous quarter and up 66% from a year ago.

• It revealed that NVIDIA Blackwell achieved the highest performance and best overall efficiency in the SemiAnalysis InferenceMAX benchmarks, while delivering 10x throughput per megawatt compared with the previous generation.

• Announced a strategic partnership with OpenAI to deploy at least 10 gigawatts of NVIDIA systems for OpenAI’s next-generation AI infrastructure.

• Partnered with industry leaders, including Google Cloud, Microsoft, Oracle and xAI, to build America’s AI infrastructure with hundreds of thousands of Nvidia GPUs.

• Announced that, for the first time, Anthropic will run and scale on Nvidia infrastructure, initially adopting 1 gigawatt of compute capacity with Nvidia Grace Blackwell and Vera Rubin systems.

• For the gaming and AI PC segment, Nvidia said its third-quarter gaming revenue was $4.3 billion, down 1% from the previous quarter and up 30% from a year ago.

Outlook for Q4

• Revenue is expected to be $65.0 billion, plus or minus 2%.

• GAAP and non-GAAP gross margins are expected to be 74.8% and 75.0%, respectively, plus or minus 50 basis points.

• GAAP and non-GAAP operating expenses are expected to be approximately $6.7 billion and $5.0 billion, respectively.

• GAAP and non-GAAP other income and expense are expected to be an income of approximately $500 million, excluding gains and losses from non-marketable and publicly-held equity securities.

• GAAP and non-GAAP tax rates are expected to be 17.0%, plus or minus 1%, excluding any discrete items.

What stellar numbers show

Following the Q3 earnings, an AP report said that Nvidia's sales of the computing chips powering the artificial intelligence craze surged beyond the lofty bar set by stock market analysts in a performance that may ease recent jitters about a Big Tech boom turning into a bust that topples the world's most valuable company.

The results announced late Wednesday provided a pulse check on the frenzied spending on AI technology that has been fuelling both the stock market and much of the overall economy since OpenAI released its ChatGPT three years ago.

Nvidia has been by far the biggest beneficiary of the run-up because its processors have become indispensable for building the AI factories that are needed to enable what's supposed to be the most dramatic shift in technology since Apple released the iPhone in 2007.

But in the past few weeks there has been a rising tide of sentiment that the high expectations for AI may have become far too frothy, setting the stage for a jarring comedown that could be just as dramatic as the ascent that transformed Nvidia from a company worth less than $400 billion three years ago to one worth $4.5 trillion today.

Nvidia's report for its fiscal third quarter covering the August-October period now seems likely to elicit a sigh of relief among those fretting about a worst-case scenario.

Nvidia stock jumped as much as 5% after the AI chip leader's third-quarter results beat analysts' estimates on the top and bottom lines and offered a better-than-anticipated outlook.